Is BSC investment right for you?

Our purpose

We give organisations tackling major social issues access to new sources of finance by investing in social investment finance intermediaries (SIFIs). These are organisations that are set up to provide appropriate and affordable finance and support to social sector organisations. By investing in SIFIs, and so growing and strengthening the social investment market as a whole, we can generate more money for the social sector than we can bring in alone.

You can find out more about our vision and mission here and our role in the social investment market here.

We can only invest in SIFIs. We seek both a social and a financial return from every investment we make. The balance of social and financial return will be different in each case. This means that we do not make grants.

You can find out more about how our investments work here.

If you think you are not eligible for our investments, we can help you find out about other sources of investment and support here.

Who can apply?

We only invest in social investment finance intermediaries (SIFIs).

SIFIs that we invest in must be registered in the UK and provide investment and other support to social sector organisations that primarily benefit people and communities in the UK.

We invest in SIFIs that have a:

strong management team and good corporate governance systems;

robust business plan and financial model with realistic underlying assumptions; and

clear social mission with well-developed systems for delivering it and monitoring social impact.

We are not able to consider investment proposals from:

frontline social sector organisations;

shell investment vehicles or ownerless orphan investment structures/funds;

SIFIs investing in or providing support to social sector organisations that deliver only environmental impact;

SIFIs without a clear and well-articulated social mission;

SIFIs without a base in the UK or which provide support to social sector organisations that primarily benefit people and communities outside the UK.

If you are not eligible for our investment, there may be other sources of investment and support that are right for you. Find out more here -

What we fund

We invest in SIFIs to enable them to become financially robust and able to increase the social sector’s access to appropriate and affordable finance.

The minimum size of investment we make is £500,000. The maximum investment that we will make initially is £15m. We will always be looking to ensure diversification across our portfolio.

We invest in the following ways:

Capitalisation and balance sheet growth: injecting core equity capital to build stronger, larger SIFIs that are able to raise further private investment and provide a reliable and predictable flow of capital to social sector organisations;

Risk and working capital: acting as lead or cornerstone investor in the developing and piloting of financial products and funds that provide risk and working capital to the social sector;

Sustainability and operational growth: providing medium to long-term capital to SIFIs to enable them to achieve sustainability and scale and so increase the volume of affordable finance that they can offer to the social sector;

Market mechanisms and infrastructure: acting as lead or cornerstone investor and/or providing underwriting support for the development of the market infrastructure;

Advice, skills and information: providing direct equity and loan investments to SIFIs developing and providing financial advisory and corporate finance services to help social sector organisations build the skills and capacity required to take on investment.

We invest in SIFIs providing investment and support to social sector organisations in the following broad areas:

Financial inclusion

Education

Employment & Skills

Housing & Shelter

Mental Health

Physical Health

Social cohesion

Well-being

More detailed information can be found in our application guidance notes.

Application process

There are three stages to the BSC application process:

1

Expression of Interest

You need to submit an Expression of Interest form. You will be asked for information about your organisation, what type of investment you are looking for, how much and for what.

Expressions of interest are assessed by our internal investment team who will decide whether to take your proposal forward. If we would like to take your proposal forward, we will send you a full application form. If we decide not to take your proposal forward, we will contact you to explain why.

You can submit an Expression of Interest at any time. We will normally let you know whether we would like to take your proposal forward within two weeks of receiving your form.

You can submit Expressions of Interest for more than one proposal. We will assess each on its own merit. We will also need to consider whether you have the capacity to manage more than one investment.

Please click here for the Expression of Interest form. This is an online form that is submitted directly to us, so you will need to make sure you have all the information to hand before you complete it
2

Application

The application form will ask you for more information, including a full business plan and financial model. We will also need your social mission statement and information about your management and governance structures.

Once we have your completed application form, it will be allocated to a dedicated investment analyst. They will contact you if any more information is needed or if we have any queries.

Applications are then assessed by our internal investment team. We will contact you to let you know whether we have decided to take your proposal forward to due diligence, or to explain why we have decided not to take your proposal any further.

Once we have all the information we need, we will normally let you know whether we have decided to take your proposal forward within two weeks.
3

Due diligence

If your application is successful, your investment analyst will contact you to begin a thorough due diligence process. This will include a visit to your offices, interviews with your key staff and Board members, scenario testing your financial projections and a review of your social impact reporting.

Following successful due diligence, we will send you a formal ‘Heads of Terms’, which will set out our offer of investment alongside any conditions of investment. Once the ‘Heads of Terms’ has been agreed, we will issue the formal investment documentation and release funds.

The due diligence process can take some time to complete, particularly if we are investing alongside other investors.

You can download the guidance notes on our application criteria and process here.

Contact us

Our investment team is happy to answer any questions you have about our investment criteria and the application process. You can contact them via investmentenquiries@bigsocietycapital.com